If you were expecting some kind of sun sign nonsense, forget about it. This is real astrology for the real world. If it's real astrology for yourself that you want, you can get it by phone or in print. And if you need help deciphering the astrological glyphs in the graphics accompanying this article, see Astroglyphs: Astrological Symbols Guide. Please note: this forecast is expressed in terms of Universal Time (UT).

April had just begun when the first validation of my forecast for the month began hitting the headlines. I had written that "torrential winds and rains and powerful seismic action (Richter 5+ earthquakes and volcanic eruptions) make headlines from the first day of the month, and don't let up much until the 5th, what with the full moon setting things up on the 2nd." It was on the 1st - remember, all my forecasts are expressed in UT (Universal Time, aka GMT) - when a powerful earthquake (Richter 8 magnitude) and killer 10-meter tsunami struck the Solomon Islands. Entire villages were washed away, so casualty counts remain at best estimates.

I had warned that April would be likely to bring "a rash of fires, accidents, crashes, explosions, criminal violence, military clashes and the like," and indeed it did. Tragically - and it was the worst such tragedy in US history - a mass murderer went on a shooting rampage at the Virginia Tech University campus in Blacksburg, VA. The gunman killed himself, but not soon enough: he shot 32 innocent people dead on the campus on the morning of the 16th. While that one incident was a focus of attention, there were plenty more like it: the murder of the mayor of Nagasaki, the murder-suicide at the Johnson Space Center, and of course the ongoing slaughter in Iraq and elsewhere. I had mentioned that such tragedies would be most prevalent "around the 12th, 25th and 29th," and so far that's been very close to the mark. I do expect things to ease up as April draws to a close, as mentioned in my forecast.